Ark. hopes rail line fix leads

Monday

Dec 30, 2013 at 9:50 AM

The rail line links Louisiana's Lake Providence port on the Mississippi River to the Union Pacific Railroad in McGehee, Ark. The line is used primarily to transport agricultural products, such as cotton and timber.

Associated Press

Officials in southeast Arkansas hope the renovation of an aging industrial railroad line will help spark economic development in 2014.

The rail line links Louisiana's Lake Providence port on the Mississippi River to the Union Pacific Railroad in McGehee, Ark. The line is used primarily to transport agricultural products, such as cotton and timber.

Arkansas has chipped in $4.5 million for the project, and Louisiana has provided $2 million to renovate the 90-mile line, according to Glen Bell, executive director of the Southeast Arkansas Economic Development District.

And officials hope that money will pay off.

"Our hope is that we can create some industrial sites that will be able to access this rail line," Bell told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper (http://bit.ly/1eO85lx ).

The renovations should be complete sometime next year, the newspaper reported.

"We are talking to potential industrial companies right now," Bell said. "They want to know how much it will cost them to get their raw materials to and from the sites they need to go, and we are providing that for them."

A section of the rail line between Lake Village and McGehee is active, but its reliability and train speeds are limited because of the track's age, Chicot County Judge Mack Ball Jr. told the newspaper.

Ball said he and other southeast Arkansas officials are looking forward to the potential economic effect the renovated rail line will have on the area.

"Having this rail line back in Chicot County would be a transportation tool for the industries we already have that have not been able to use it and a tool to draw in new companies," Ball said.

Beyond helping industries in Arkansas, the renovated line will provide industries in northeast Louisiana with quicker access to the Union Pacific Railroad in McGehee, Bell said.

"They currently have to use Kansas City Southern Railroad and go to Monroe, then switch there to Union Pacific if they want to head north, and that's expensive," Bell said. "We are giving them a cheaper alternative, and it will benefit all involved."